Rock, Paper, Shotgun

I’m guessing all these patches are iterative and not of much interest to the rmore casual Vampire The Masquerade: Bloodlines observer by now, but whenever one of these fan-made updates passes by my inbox I still can’t help but double-take and think ‘wow.’ You guys are wonderful. Completely mad, but wonderful. Bloodlines is now seven years old, was essentially abandoned by its publisher after its developer closed a few months after release, but the fans have just kept on going, fixing things, improving things, digging up locked away extra content and generally trying to keep their dream game alive. And, in a vampire fetishistic subset’s case, entirely gratuitously add oodles of bare breasts wherever possible and regardless of any effect on atmosphere or internal logic. I’ll stick to the fixes and restored content, thanks.

Anyway: patch 7.6 – 7.6! – is now out, and along with a few fixes restores some missing soundtrack music to the game. Grab it from here, along with assorted add-ons. If only every abandoned game received so much love so much later.

It would be simply rude to say ‘isn’t this the kind of thing that every MMO in its right mind should have at launch?’, so instead let’s just celebrate that, finally, friends from different World of Warcraft servers can band together to give some sort of huge boss with a repeating attack pattern what’s coming to him/her/it/them.
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This trailer is like a metaphor for Call of Duty: Elite, Activision’s new enhanced online premium service package for the CODs. Is it supposed to be funny? You won’t be able to miss the best jokes, because “theLEGENDofKARL” says “Haha, get it?” after them all. Read the rest of this entry »

Bloody typical. I’ve only just kicked my Realm of the Mad God habit, and then another permadeath RPG comes along and imprisons my mind with compulsion, combat and crits. Dungeons of Dredmor, released yesterday, is far closer to the traditional roguelike model, though it’s left behind the complicated controls and key combinations of the genre’s steelier-eyed denizens in favour of something altogether more accessible. But no less punishing.
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Sorry good readers, I have no news about that new Tomb Raider game. I was hoping to share some useful information about the game, but all I have is a 12 minute making of behind the scenes of the CGI trailer. Wait, what? Read the rest of this entry »

Photo by Jeff Kubina

It’s seems that early indications for Zeboyd Games, the latest in a series of developers to make the leap from Xbox to PC, are “tremendous success” on the mighty grey tower. This got me thinking: What other upcoming Xbox Indie games could end up coming to PC too? If you’re developing an XBLIG, and have intentions to release it on PC, we want to hear from you. This is the RPS Xbox Indie Outreach Program. Read the rest of this entry »

Some computers are different from other computers. If you’ve got yourself one of those Apple-flavoured PCs, then here’s some excellent news for you. Word reached us courtesy of indiegames.com that it’s now possible to play Derek Yu’s fabulous procedurally generated cave adventure Spelunky on a Mac.

Grab it here, and you too can go on a terrifying treasure hunt in a cave, but you can now use a mouse with less buttons to do it. Watch out for the traps. And spiders. And snakes. Watch out for everything.

I haven’t played well-received PSN platformer Explodemon! as yet, but I have taken note of the fact that it has the best name. Or is it just me who thinks it sounds like someone gleefully detonating Pikachu into a shower of bloody yellow bits? Now, I can also take note of the fact that, as of next month, it will be a PC game.

Curve Studios’ self-exploding minihit is due in August, though a specific date hasn’t been announced as yet. This means it’s potentially up against erstwhile peer/rival Ms. ‘Splosion Man, which may also be PC-bound. You spend ages waiting for one game starring a combustive hero, then two come along at once. TYPICAL. A few facts and some footage of Explodemon! await below. Yes, it does have an exclamation mark in its title. Yes, it does make including its name in sentences incredibly troublesome.
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People of Britain! It has been a proud week. The lizard-king has been ousted from his secret throne of hate, the weather has been strong and The Apprentice continues to prove that reality TV isn’t necessarily unwatchable horror-tedium aimed at morons and the intellectually lazy. We should celebrate with another RPS Social Club. This time, it’s another Southern-centric gathering of drink’n'chat, held at The Blue Post near London’s famous and famously crowded Leicester Square. Maybe you’ll see the Queen, or Ben Elton. You’ll definitely see a bunch of RPS readers and perhaps a contributor or two though – or at least you will if you make your way up to the Blue Post’s function room from 6pm onwards tomorrow, Saturday 16 July. A chum’s birthday do (the latest of far too many in recent weeks, which says far too much about the mating habits of my friends’ parents) means I won’t be attendance, but I do wish I was. Have fun!

More details in this here forum thread.

It’s been a pretty dry couple of weeks for both games releases and games news, which for a games site makes it the equivalent of existing on a thin gruel made from ground-up snail shells, hoping that a good meal’s just around the corner. The traditional games Summer lull has forever been confusing – it’s not really like gamers suddenly abandon their machines for three months in favour of foot-to-ball, camping excursions and ill-advised picnics. Still, there it is.

Which begs the question – what are you playing right now? Is it any good? Do you feel like you’re just killing time/scratching at the walls until the flow of new stuff becomes thicker, or are you happy as a monkey with all the indie and retro stuff around at the moment? Anything weird’n'wonderful you reckon we’ve missed? (And don’t say Dungeons of Dredmor, I’m playing that at the moment). Hold forth!

Atlus have announced that their medieval melee game, The Cursed Crusade, will be released October 11th, according to Gemetsu. We’ve already seen lots of sword action from this Templar-based manstabber, but now there’s a reveal of the more supernatural elements of the game, as you can see in the fire-and-demon packed trailer, below. There’s some kind of curse involved in this crusade, that’s for certain.

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